Relief Flights into Kabul

[Al Capone]

>>> Field Intelligence Required <<<

For a few of us, involved with relief agencies to operate relief flights into Afghanistan transporting anything from Food, medicines and blankets.

Several flights have operated into airfields such as Bagram (30 miles North of Kabul) under control of British and US forces. So far a few C17 flights have operated and several IL-76 Freighters as no h-loaders/fuel are available and own ramp must be used.

Anyone can share information on Kabul? CNN showed footage of Kabul's only runway being patched up by local Afghanis. How safe will it be for Commercial airlines to operate into Kabul on Special Relief Missions? There's a lot of demand out there for relief operation. The question is WHEN will Kabul be safe for one off charter flights (cargo of coarse).

If anyone has any information, please kindly join in....

Merry X-Mas and don't spend your X-mas too much on the internet!

Al Capone

[newswatcher]

Al C, this appeared over the weekend, any truth in it?

"Iranian airline Mahan Air has started flights from the country's eastern city of Mashhad to the Afghan capital Kabul. The airline will run three flights a week starting with an Airbus 300, which has room for 250 passengers.

The flights, which started yesterday, are initially landing at the military airport at Bagram, some 60 km north of Kabul since Kabul's airport is still "inadequate" amid the war in that country."

[Firefly80]

The US State Dept issued an advisory NOTAM relating to entry procedures into Afghanistan. This is rapidly being overtaken by plans to establish a central 'agency' for movement into and out of Afg. The new agency is the (Interim) Regional Air Movements Coordination Centre (IRAMCC). They will be able to help. I don't know if they are taking calls yet so I won't post their number yet. In the mean time the old NOTAM has numbers for CENTCOM, CHLC Islamabad, and CHLC Duchambe, where people will help where possible.

[Al Capone]

Thanks to 'Newswatcher' and 'FireFly80'..
I would not be surprised if the Iranians are thinking os starting pax services. I'd like to know what their War Risk Insurance cover would be like ???

So far the Iranians have chartered their IL 76 freighters via a Russsian broker (Aviacon) operating under an Iranian AOC (Safaran arlines). They've done a good job and have actually shown much support to the Afghan crisis. Thus the reason why some relief organizations are starting to base their logistic offices in Iran (Mashad) notably.

I've been advised that Kabul International should have its runway cleared by Jan 16th. It seems prematured, looking at the pix on CNN. I wonder what the runway's PCN would be like after a quick DIY hand cementing the white numbers.

Does anyone of you have a contact in Kabul? Perhaps a relief agency staff that has sufficient knowledge to asses the runway there?

Al Capone

[CargoOne]

Procedures issued by CJCMOTF (Coalision joint civil military operations task force), only 3 airfields mentioned - Bagram airbase, Mazar-I-Sharif and Faisabad (data as two weeks ago). Only Bagram is listed as "controlled by USAF". All others are uncontrolled.
No fuel available at Bagram. No ATC over Afghnistan, only partial info supplied by "BOSSMAN" on 126.325 (believed to be USAF AWACS). TCAS is very helpfull. Everything is on captain discretion, nobody responsible. Aircraft on approach and departure at Bagram is highly recommended to execute military-style spin-descent/spin-climb to avoid possible ground-to-air missiles.
Any specific info needed - ask the question. We already operated a flight to Bagram.